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Campus Activities Programs:

An Informal Assessment of Fresno State’s USU Productions

Ariana Sanchez Alvarez, Lyssa Gomez, Nancy Rios, and Yazmin Colin

California State University, Fresno

Campus Activities Programs:

An Informal Assessment of Fresno State’s USU Productions

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The office’s Mission, Vision, and Purpose:

For the purpose of this project, we will conduct a review of the Marketing and Internship

Program at USU Productions within Student Involvement at CSU, Fresno. USU Productions

programs being offered connect students to leadership experiences, real life experiences,

planning events including trips, service opportunities, peer to peer advising, volunteer leadership

opportunities, and club sports where students compete with other students and represent Fresno

State. As described in CAS Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, one

of its guiding principles indicates that mission statements must reference student learning,

development, and success. USU Productions aligns with CAS’s principles because its mission is

to “cultivate community and foster engagement to promote co-curricular learning through our

values of support and teamwork, service, growth leadership and inclusion. Its mission statement

reflects student learning and development. Student Involvement is made up of programs and

services such as Club Sports, Off-Campus Student Life, Fraternity and Sorority Life, USU

Productions, Vintage Days, & Esports

As it relates to the institution Fresno State’s Mission is to boldly educate and empower

students for success. Fresno State believes the value of “distinction that excellence emerges with

a willingness to be bold.” Its values of discovery, diversity, and distinction align with USU

productions programming, foster student success and to foster personal passion, potential and a

sense of belonging. As described in CAS professional standards, Campus Activities Programs

must provide opportunities and create an environment for students to participate in co-curricular

and extra-curricular activities and events that compliment academic experience.

The Marketing Internship Program is for undergraduate students who are interested in

social media content. USU productions searches for talented students to assist in the marketing
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and promotion of USU production events. With the work of those student interns USU

productions are able to bring quality enriching events to campus and put their marketing skills to

practice. As part of the program, students are able to gain skills such as graphic design,

videography as well as leadership skills. Additionally, students will develop their professional

circle of friends and strengthen their communication and networking skills.

Offering Improvements on Three Learning Outcomes

USU Productions Marketing Internship had some language of what could be some

expectations of their marketing interns in the contract they have to sign. While these are

expectations, we can help USU Productions to develop these into student learning outcomes that

they can later be better asset using the questionnaire also provided in the section below.

These learning outcomes should be created using language from the Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Cognitive Domain framework. This framework allows for categorization of the learning

outcomes from simply being able to remember simple facts to being able to create new

knowledge and understanding (Campus Lap, 2020). You will find the learning outcomes in

Appendix A.

Identifying Assessment Methods

As Henning and Roberts (2016) indicate, assessment needs to take place in order to

measure if event programs are truly effective in accomplishing the programs' student learning

outcomes they have developed. As our focus is the student marketing internship program we

suggest that USU Productions use the survey questionnaire to assess the learning outcomes that

we have provided. (Appendix B). These learning outcomes are aligned with the three learning

outcomes that have been identified in the previous section. By having students take the

questionnaire it will allow USU Productions to better understand if their program is successful in
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accomplishing the student learning outcomes. We suggest that the best way to capture the

students ability to “ design social media graphics” is to have the interns create a portfolio, which

is a more direct way of assessing students (Appendix B). Direct assessment is the ability for

students to demonstrate their learning through actual evidence (Henning & Roberts, 2016). It is

important for USU Productions to also create a rubric prior to having students create a portfolio.

The rubric will help ensure there are set guidelines for analyzing the work and decrease the

likelihood of bias, set clear expectations, and helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the

designed graphics (Suskie,2018). Portfolios and the creation of the rubric, USU Productions can

analyze if students meet the student learning outcomes or if there was an aspect that students

were not meeting. As a program, if there were anything lacking, they can use the data collected

from the portfolios to make any changes to the program that will enhance the students' learning.

Sriram (2014) indicates that when in the development stages of a survey, it is important

to consider when and how a survey will be administered. Since USU Productions oversees the

workload of their interns, they are able to ensure that students complete the survey. To

demonstrate the progress of students, a pre-survey can be conducted. The questionnaire we have

developed is more of a post test, but the questions can be altered to capture the skill set of the

students when it comes to the different softwares they will be using throughout the internship. At

the end of their experience, they can be given the questionnaire as part of their exit interview and

it will provide USU Productions a way for an indirect assessment.

Stakeholders and Audience

The purpose of this proposal is to assist in the development of how to assess interns

knowledge of marketing and USU Productions through the marketing internship. Currently there

is no practice implemented into the assessment of the knowledge obtained by the students
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involved in the marketing internship program. Although there are goals and expectations listed of

the interns, there is no program learning outcomes, therefore, no way to assess if the students are

meeting the program’s learning outcomes. With the implementation of the three learning

outcomes we provided and the assessment for the learning outcomes, the program coordinator

can distinguish to what extent the students are actually learning. We predict that the students will

be able to learn more about USU Productions, various marketing strategies, graphic design, and

leadership through the implementation of survey questions and performance methods. Student

interns will be able to meet the programs learning objectives through their learning and

development in the internship.

The suggested program learning outcomes are students will be able to demonstrate

proficient use of programs such as Illustrator, photoshop, and Canva in creating graphics and

other marketing materials, students will be able to articulate their understanding of USU

Productions in communication with other students who are not familiar with the program, and

students will be able to design social media graphics with all information needed including USU

Productions Presents “event name”, date, time, location, type of event registration information,

and social media icons. The mission statement of Fresno State is to “boldly educate and

empower students for success,” (Fresno State, n.d.). The mission of USU Productions is “to

develop entertaining and enriching events and programs throughout the year,” (USU

Productions, n.d.). Student learning within the marketing internship is to familiarize students

with who USU Productions is and what they do, along with providing learning opportunities on

how to market events and create marketing materials. The learning outcomes are aligned with the

institutional and functional area mission by providing opportunities and creating an environment

for students to participate in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities and events that
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compliment academic experience. This is done through not only obtaining knowledge in graphic

design and videography, but also through leadership.

The addressed stakeholders include administrators and students, particularly the Dean of

students involvement and the Dean of student affairs and students of Fresno State (Henning and

Roberts, 2016, pg. 56). According to Henning and Roberts (2016), assessment results are given

to address stakeholders. In the case of USU Productions marketing internship, the stakeholders

would be administrators and students. Administrators such as the Dean of Student Involvement

and the Dean of Student Affairs require the assessment of the internship for various reasons such

as purpose, student learning outcomes, and funding for the program. Assessment results are

crucial to reporting the necessity of this program. According to Breciani et al. (2009):

“Outcomes-based assessment results inform the rationale for the continuation of current,

and the development of new, co-curricular programs and services and may be used to

demonstrate how financial and human capital are used to enhance student learning and

development,” (p. 26).

If the program is accurately able to identify student learning within the internship, then funding

will increase or decrease depending on the results of the assessment. Assessment results for the

student population may result in the recruitment of students to join the internship program. USU

Productions may use testimonials as well as results of learning outcomes to aid in the recruitment

of potential students.

Summary, Analysis, and Closing the Loop

After a thorough review, our assessment team determined two main recommendations

that the program could potentially implement moving forward. The implementation of the
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provided recommendations could aid in the closing of the loop, which according to Kuh et al.

(2015) would allow the department to measure the impact of the internship and determine if

there is sufficient learning. The recommendations we suggested to the marketing internship was

to implement the use of portfolios and provide a questionnaire to the students who partake in the

program. The implementation of portfolios would not only survey as a direct measure of

proficiency and progression, but also a way for the student to store the social media graphics

they have created during their time in the program. This would best be done by saving all created

material in an electronic form such as a folder on Google Drive or in physical folder form. This

would permit the students to showcase their work in future opportunities such as job interviews

and other marketing positions they come across. The second recommendation our team provided

was the use of a questionnaire, another direction measurement, to be administered specifically to

interns at their exit interview. The data gathered from this questionnaire will provide direct

insight on whether the intens were able to learn throughout their internship. With information

gathered from the implementation of our recommendations the department will hopefully be able

to make changes accordingly to address issues that maybe potentially inhibit students from

learning or from flourishing to their maximum potential. Most importantly, through doing this it

is important for USU Productions and the Marketing Internship to keep in mind, “assessment of

student learning is a continuous process” (Kuh et al., 2015, p.71). Knowing that this process is

continuous will allow them to periodically assess and maintain themselves accountable and

ensure that interns are receiving the best experience possible.

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Reference

About student affairs and enrollment management. (n.d.). Fresno State. Retrieved from

https://fresnostate.edu/studentaffairs/division/about/#:~:text=OUR%20MISSION,and
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%20empower%20students%20for%20success.

Breciani, et al. (2009). Definition and rationale for outcomes- based assessment. Stylus

Publishing. p. 26.

Campus Lap. (2020). Writing learning outcomes worksheet. Retrieved from

https://outcomessupport.campuslabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004650368-Writing-

Learning-Outcomes-Worksheet

Division of continuing and global education. (n.d.) Fresno State. Retrieved from

http://www.fresnostate.edu/cge/about/mission.html

Henning, G. W. & Roberts, D. (2016). Student affairs assessment: Theory to practice. Stylus

Publishing. p. 56.

Kuh, G., Ikenberry, S., George, K., Jankowski, N.m Cain, T., Ewell, P., Hutchings, P., & Kinzie,

J. (2015). Using evidence of student learning to improve higher education.

San Francisco: CA: Jossey-Bass

Sriram, R. (2014). Five things not to do in developing surveys for assessment in student affairs.

NASPA Research and Policy Institute Issue Brief. NASPA-Student Affairs Administrators

in Higher Education

Suskie, L. (2018). Assessing student learning: A common sense guide. John Wiley & Sons.

Usu productions. (n.d.). Fresno State Student Involvement. Retrieved from

http://www.fresnostate.edu/studentaffairs/studentinvolvement/programs/productions.html

Appendix A

Student Learning Outcomes for the Marketing Internship

1. Students will be able to demonstrate proficient use of programs such as illustrator,

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photoshop, and canva in creating graphics and other marketing materials.

2. Students will be able to articulate their understanding of USU Productions in

communication with other students who are not familiar with the program.

3. Students will be able to design social media graphics with all information needed

including USU Productions Presents “event name”, date, time, location, type of event

registration information, and social media icons.

Appendix B

Ten Survey Questions for Assessing the SLOs

1. On a scale of 1-5 how comfortable are you with the use of programs such as illustrator,

photoshop, and canva?

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Scale: 1- Very Comfortable, 2- Somewhat Comfortable, 3- Neutral, 4- Somewhat

Uncomfortable, 5- Very Uncomfortable

2. On a scale of 1-5, how effective were illustrator, photoshop, and canva as a

communication tool to provide information to USU Production programming?

Scale: 1- Very effective, 2- Somewhat effective, 3- Neutral, 4- Somewhat ineffective, 5-

Very ineffective

3. On a scale from 1-5, do you foresee the skills you learned in the internship program

transfering to other areas of your academic and professional experiences?

Scale: 1- Very transferable, 2- somewhat transferable, 3- neutral, 4- somewhat not

transferable, 5- Not transferable

4. On a scale from 1-5, Overall, how satisfied were you with your internship experience?

Scale: 1-Very Satisfied , 2-Satisfied, 3- Not Applicable, 4- Dissatisfied , 5-Very

Dissatisfied

5. Please identify two CAS goals that were directly related to the marketing internship.

6. How did these extra-curricular opportunities enhance your leadership experience?

7. If you could change anything about your internship experience, what would it be and

why?

8. What is one area within your internship you wished you could have obtained further

professional development?

9. Based on your experience would you recommend this internship to other students?

10. Are there any additional comments or suggestions you have that were not captured in the

questions above?
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